2017 New Year Reflection: Sound and Light

There’s something incredibly appealing about fireworks. There aren’t very many things that my over-thinking mind doesn’t try to work out the why of it, but it and fireworks have a truce. Fireworks just is, and basically so for everyone. It’s only a matter of admitting it or not.

2017 new year is the first year I went to see fireworks where I now live, even though I’ve been here a year and they shoot them up almost literally next door in KLCC Park. The area is famously packed, and that’s the truth. I usually avoid crowds – don’t really like the jostle – but this year I’ve decided to try and look at where I live, as though I were visiting as a traveller.

So I went to the park with all the rest, even though I probably would have got a better view from my own apartment. I watched them with delight as the others did, smartphones up and recording as is the culture of the day. I stood watching the dark sky when the last flurry was spent. A final cinder floated on a thermal, embering green as it slowly flickered out.

Flashback

2016 had been a year of incredible highs and lows for me so I don’t really know what to feel at its passing. It had begun with promise and dawn. So as it set I feel as though I should like to grasp the waning rays, in memory of that blossom of happiness that never turned into seeds in the ground. But there had been also, a regret that sank deep. The year had brought in my life once more the ways we seek to possess others and call it love. Truly, jealousy is the shadow of greed. How few of us understand that real love is a fountain, and not a black hole! And how impossible to explain, to those not ready to believe it.

Perhaps the universe does sift between those who have understood, and those who have not. And I have yet to be wise enough to stop struggling when it does.

2017 New Year Reflection

Out on the park at the epicentre of the metropolis, the crowd is incredibly diverse and truly international, everyone ambling along intending to watch the fireworks show. They blend into a uniform mass. The entrepreneurial have broken out impromptu stalls in the streets hawking headbands with blinking lights. By the lake, against the backdrop of pop music and dancing fountains, the crowds blink amongst the trees as though there were technicolour fireflies signalling amongst us.

I thought then, that humankind basically can’t help but celebrate – anything and since all time – with sound and light. There’s just some kind of attraction to whatever that emits light and makes sound, for celebratory purposes. Really the differences that arise between cultures basically revolve around what kind, and how much, and what it means for identity. (Although I have to assert my firm opinion that the vuvuzela is a diabolical invention that should be inflicted on no one of the human race).

So yes, I know the expense of fireworks shows upon city coffers that may, in these trying times, be lighter than usual. There is the environmental damage of the chemicals to the waters and the air. Not to mention the probable working conditions of its manufacture.

And yet, and yet – and herein lies the knot of the most unsolvable of our global existential problems – it’s beautiful and charismatic. And so we overlook and forgive all of that for the momentary way we feel when we enjoy it.

In the end 2016 showed us all across the world something common to us. Whatever knowledge and wisdom we have laboriously accumulated through the aeons on how to choose things of timeless value, its weight is still not greater than the glamour of our common human addiction – to charisma.

The World with Teja

Some people hike to reach high points, for the view. But what makes a cool hike for me is discovering surprise weird things, like this insect with a house of sticks, climbing onto a rock!#weirdinsect #hiking #coolinsect #TidbitThursday

For today's #FridayInspiration, here's a simple video sharing from an island community organisation in a Malaysian Marine Park, demonstrating a newly-acquired glass grinding machine, which enables the island to recycle waste glass into construction materials!

Cintai TiomanSince 2014 we have been looking for a way to deal with the glass waste on tioman. we could not recycle it on mainland and there were only a few upcycling options. Thanks to funding from Yayasan Sime Darby we were able to buy this glass crushing machine last month. the machine allows us to turn glass into sand which can be used for construction. the machine is house and managed by Rumah Hijau Tioman so please send your glass bottles there.

Teja also writes at

Teja Began Blogging with free training from

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.